They note that they provide everything under permissive licenses and then wonder why giant corporations adopt their technology without giving anything back.
Well, that is something that MongoDB and some other no-SQL databases have had to deal with. Their userbase insists on permissive licenses, then the largest and most profitable users refuse to support the organizations that pay the developers. In many cases, the result is some custom non-free license (generally masquerading as “open source” but neither free software nor open source software) meant to extract money out of users who make money using the product.
Personally, I’d rather see #GPLv3 / #AGPLv3 without a “buy a commercial license to avoid responsibilities” plan going into widespread use, but that’s sure to greatly reduce revenues. It probably means paid support is the main funding model.
But anyway, I think that Matrix has done really well for something that is inherently inferior to #XMPP, but has a pretty face and good marketing team.
The additional clause that requires release of source code for a SaaS host’s entire service. That is, if you are Amazon, and you offer a cloud database based on #MongoDB as part of your AWS service, the license forces you to open the source repos for the entire AWS service ... including the “secret sauce” that serves as the reason people go with Amazon instead of “Uncle Fred’s Discount Cloud Hosting and Breakfast Cafe.
The #SSPL license is intended to make it unprofitable to host the service as a cloud-based offering, so that companies whose business is based around cloud-based service hosting will be forced to buy a proprietary commercial license, and therefore is not “free”.
OTOH, the #AGPLv3 forces release of the source (as used in operating the service) of the specific software (as modified and in use) and its derivatives, but not of other software used in operating your service.